A Melody of Maybes
by The Mad Writer
Summary: Ed reflects on the past ten years during a visit to Spike's grave. ONE-SHOT FIC


A/N: Ah, the dreaded disclaimer! Ok, let's get this done. I don't own Cowboy Bebop, I never have owned Cowboy Bebop, and I never will own Cowboy Bebop. Is that disclaimer enough for you to not sue me? It had better be cause I own nothing. Nada, zip, zero, zilch. I don't even own this computer for Pete's sake! So if you decide to sue me you won't get jack squat cause I don't have anything. Except for my copy of LotR and my Yu-Gi-Oh! deck and I will fight tooth and claw to keep both of those things. Ok, that's enough. On with the story. Work my beloved muse the Frying Pan of Doom! Mwhahahahahaha! Oh yeah, all flames will go to burning Malik and Lord Darcia cause they're freaks! But you can shoot me for any lame direct lines or rip offs I make from the show. Ok, now to the story.  
  
A Melody of Maybes   
  
It wasn't an unusual place to see such a beautiful young woman; but then again it was never usual to see anyone at a cemetery. She wore a black overcoat that reached to her knees while black combat boots reached down the rest of the way. Her short red hair had a controlled insanity about it. For no apparent reason she completed her regalia with a pair of sunglasses, pretty ridiculous on this rainy day. She was getting rather wet. Perhaps today held some importance for her to be visiting a parent or a grandparent or some other long dead relative. Perhaps she just liked graveyards, but there was something about her walk that suggested otherwise. There weren't any funerals that day so she couldn't be there for that. Plus, who would take a dog to a funeral? The plump Corgi followed at the woman's heels. Where she was slim and young, the dog was pretty fat and worn looking, yet he followed her with the step of a pup. He didn't seem to mind the rain at all. In fact it seemed that his attention was locked on his young mistress. Wherever she went, the dog just kept looking up at her and following. To say the least, the years had changed Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV.   
  
It had been ten, almost eleven, years since she and Ein had left the Bebop behind to go search for her father. Ed still didn't know if she had made the right decision. Perhaps things would have turned out differently if she hadn't left. Maybe she wouldn't be making this trip right now. Maybe... No, Ed shook her head. Maybes never got anybody anywhere. Hadn't her search for her father proved that to her? The whole basis of her search for him had been based on a maybe. Maybe she would find her father. Maybe she would be able to live with him. Maybe he would give her the love and care that a father should give his daughter. Maybe.   
  
Ed had been a fool. She'd spent over a year tracking down that man. And what had she found when she finally got to him? Not what she'd expected that's for sure. But what had she expected? Not even she knew. The next two years had consisted of running around after craters, trying to figure out if her father's assistant was named Mackenroe or Macintosh, and her father trying to figure out if he had a son or a daughter all the while calling her "Francoise." God, she hated that name. She'd tried to get her father to call her Ed, but it had never worked. Ed had a theory about giving something a name. In naming something, somehow that thing became yours. Her father had named her "Francoise" ergo he "owned" her so instead of being her own person, she was his person. That was the initial reason why she had named herself. Instead of belonging to someone else she belonged to herself. It was an odd philosophy, but there was logic in there somewhere. If she had only listened to that philosophy maybe then she wouldn't have followed Faye's advice about finding the place where she belonged. Feh, another maybe.   
  
Why the hell had she listened to Faye? Whatever, Faye had been trying to help Ed. But she had found the place she belonged. Too bad she hadn't realized that till it was too late.  
  
After those few short years with her father, Ed and Ein had gotten left behind in one of his mad dashes to some new crater and that time, Ed had no intention of going to find him again. She was going to find the place that she had belonged and left behind. She was going to find the Bebop. It had been easy enough the first time so why shouldn't it be easy again? Then again the first time had practically been an accident. The first time Ed was "Radical Edward" the notorious hacker that nobody really knew anything about. The first time was when Ed had been alone for about a year after leaving Sister Clara at the orphanage. Yet another departure from a place that maybe she had semi-belonged, but that departure Ed could say that she had made with no regrets. Maybe she'd been lonely. Maybe she wanted a family and for some reason the crew of the Bebop sounded like as good a place as any to get that. There it was again, "maybe." Whatever the reason, Ed had been attracted to the Bebop and had done quite a bit to get them to take her with them. Ed smiled to herself. It had been quite a stunt taking over the Bebop and getting it to come back to pick her up, but it had always been worth it. Anyway, taking over control of ships had always been an easy matter. She still wondered why Jet hadn't just said no and left her on Earth. Who in their right mind would have ever taken some scrawny kid on board their ship? Kids are a responsibility, even Ed knew that. It was a good thing she was used to taking care of herself so even when she was with them, she had never really been a burden to anyone.   
  
Ed stopped to exam one of the graves. The rain was getting heavier, but Ed didn't mind. Her thoughts were on too many other things. Plus, this wasn't the grave she was looking for. She kept walking with Ein at her heels as her thoughts drifted back.  
  
The first time had been great. Ed had loved running all over the solar system, chasing bounty heads, helping out when she could, listening to Spike, Jet, and Faye banter, living in the best family she had ever known. That's what they had been hadn't they? It was an odd family to say the least, but it was a family. Jet had been sort of a pater familias (A/N: Latin term for the head of the family), Faye hadn't been exactly a mother, more of an older sister really, while Spike was an older brother, Ein had been the pet, and Ed had been the kid. Yet even now putting that family into any set position seemed odd, especially the positions of Faye and Spike. Ed had always secretly wished they had gotten together (not married of coarse, they weren't the type to get married) and that Ed could be their kid. It had always seemed to Ed that Faye had cared for Spike as something more then a comrade. He probably knew that, he just hadn't done anything about it. Spike had always seemed so, gosh, even now ten years after she'd last seen him she couldn't put her finger on what he had been. Like a ghost really. Living in this world, but already a part of the next. Ed knew that something in his past had written the book for what the rest of his life would be, but Ed didn't know enough, no one did, to say what exactly that had been.   
  
Ed had to stop for a moment. She bit her lip to keep any tears from coming. Thinking about Spike was hard anymore. He was the reason she was making this trip, wasn't he? Ed collected herself and continued her search.  
  
The second time Ed had gone searching for the Bebop, it had been a lot harder. All the hacking she did turned up nothing. The Bebop wasn't even a registered ship anymore. Ed hadn't been able to find anything about Jet or Faye or Spike. The only thing she did find that stuck out to her was some news that the Red Dragons had had some sort of war or revolution or something, but when she had tried to dig deeper she'd been blocked. The codes had been too sophisticated for even Ed to figure them out. After that Ed hadn't exactly given up looking for them, she just went about it a bit differently. She became a bounty hunter.  
  
She'd found Spike's old friend Doohan and had convinced him to give her a ship. It was a good thing that she looked older then she was or else it might have been even harder than it was, but eventually Doohan gave her the Orca. It was a crummy ship, but Ed fixed it up on her own and now it was a pretty piece of work that had gotten her and Ein out of plenty of scrapes. After getting the Orca she and Ein had done pretty good for themselves as bounty hunters. "Radical Edward" wasn't known as the infamous hacker anymore, but instead was the infamous bounty hunter who never lost a bounty. It was a good thing that most bounty heads were expecting a man to wear that name when it was a teenage girl who got them. Quite the change from when she was with the Bebop, despite the amount of bounty heads they'd captured, it was rare that they would get the reward. But that was just another thing about the Bebop that had made it an original.  
  
It had been Ed's hope that she'd be able to hear by word of mouth about someone from Bebop or that maybe one of them would hear about her and come looking. But neither of those things happened. Ed was always keeping an ear out for them and was always asking around for them wherever she went, but the answers never were answers. Some said that the Bebop had been in a gate accident with no survivors. Others said that they'd hit the big time and had retired to Mars. When Ed had been on Ganymede she'd checked around the police force to see if Jet had joined the cops again. Heck, she'd even tracked down his old girlfriend Alisa to see if she knew anything, but she hadn't either. Looking for Faye had been a task too. Ed was always stopping by casinos and racetracks looking for a red sweatered woman with short hair and a lot of money on the table, but it seemed Faye had either stopped gambling or just fallen off the face of the solar system.  
  
Finally in just the past month all of Ed's efforts to find her lost family had come to fruit. Ed had found Faye on Earth in an old bounty hunter haunt. The years had not been kind to Faye. She'd aged almost twice as fast as normal due to one of the side effects of being in cryo for fifty years. Ed had trouble recognizing her at first, Faye had changed so much, but that sharp attitude was still there making her unmistakable.   
  
It had been an odd reunion to say the least. Ed was grown up and Faye had changed. She wasn't gambling anymore because she'd "run out of money to blow and looks to get her through." Turned out that she had gained her memory back and that her family was pretty wealthy. Faye'd always guessed that considering they could put her cryo for all that time. She'd even been able to locate a few distant relatives that were still alive on Earth. As for the family's money, it turned out the cryo lab had swindled it all from them and even after a lengthy lawsuit it was no use trying to get it back, but Faye's debts were made null and void. After that she'd run around doing this and that, nothing permanent and nothing lasting.   
  
The reunion had been pretty happy up till then, but Ed wanted to know where Spike and Jet were. The answers she got were less than happy. Ed could still hear that part conversation.  
  
Flashback  
  
"Faye, where are Jet and Spike?" Ed had put off asking the question, but she couldn't anymore. She wanted to know. She had to know.  
  
Faye put down her drink and just stared at it for awhile. Ed could tell that the next part of the story wasn't going to be nice.   
  
"Are you sure you want to know?" Faye asked in a muted whisper.  
  
Ed could only nod. It had to be bad. Faye downed the rest of her drink before speaking again.  
  
"After you and Ein left, Spike's past caught up with him. Ed, Spike's... he's..."  
  
Faye turned away trying to keep the tears from showing. Ed put her hand on top of Faye's.  
  
"It's alright Faye-Faye," Ed said quietly using the old nickname she'd given Faye. "I understand. You don't need to say anymore."  
  
End Flashback  
  
Faye had taken care of all the funeral arrangements. She had even tried to contact Ed, but hadn't been able to find her in time. It had only been her and Jet at the funeral. It was the hardest thing Faye said she had ever done. After that she and Jet went separate ways. She hadn't heard anything from him since.   
  
Ed finally stopped in front of a small granite tombstone. She knelt down in front and wiped away the dirt and pulled away the grass that had covered the name on it. Ed traced her finger over the letters. Spike Spiegel 2044 - 2071. The tears finally spilled over as Ed rested her head on the cool, wet stone. She hadn't wanted to end her search like this.   
  
"Why Spike? Why did you have to be gone?" She asked quietly. What had happened in his past that led him to the grave? Maybe if I had stayed behind. Maybe if I hadn't left. Maybe, maybe... a melody of maybes drifted through Ed's mind, but not even a chorus of angels singing her maybes would bring Spike back from the dead.   
  
After all these years Ed had always thought of Spike the most. She had looked forward to seeing him again more then even Faye or Jet. Yet her searching had never brought her to finding him. Maybe somewhere deep down Ed had known he was gone and that's why she hadn't spent as much effort or whatever into finding him. But there was one question that had been eating Ed even more then her countless maybes: Did she love Spike? When she'd been with him she'd always admired him from a close distance. It was like he was some angel from the underworld, or maybe a demon from paradise. So common, yet so mysterious. He wasn't like anyone Ed had ever known.  
  
Ed remembered how he had said he didn't like kids, but he had never really treated Ed like a kid. He even brought her souvenirs sometimes and they were always the best ones. She still had all of them. But what had he been to Ed? What had she felt for him these past ten years that made her feel that he was always with her? It was the same feeling that made her not want to go looking for a significant other because she felt she already had one. Was it really Spike that she had loved all of these years? But more then that, what had she meant to him? Had she meant anything to him?   
  
Ed felt the tears start to dry up. The rain was finally starting to clear up as well. Ed sat up on her knees and looked down on the grave. Even with all those questions running around her head, Ed felt strangely at peace. Spike was dead so her questions would always go unanswered, but deep within Ed knew that he wasn't gone. He'd been with her all these years as her angel from the underworld watching over her. Maybe that was what she'd felt all these years. It was only Spike being with her. Maybe.  
  
Ed bent down and gently kissed the gravestone. She got up and whistled for Ein to come with her. She didn't have answers to any of her question and she probably never would. So until that day when she to would go to where Spike was She'd keep singing her melody of maybes. As Ed and Ein left the cemetery the sky began to clear. Just beside Spike's grave, a pinwheel shimmered in the breeze.  
  
SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY. 


End file.
